My Energizer brain, whether powered by hormones or just the ongoing weirdness that is, well, my brain, won't let me get sleepy again. I'll have to resort to my sedative of choice soon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It has no undesirable side effects, and I can "go off of it" whenever I want to.
I got into it when I was first sick, and there has always been something about it that helps quiet and focus my mind when other techniques fail me. There has been many a night in the past four years when I've only been able to fall asleep with it on. Maybe it's because the house and the "family" and the coping with extremely bizarre and often scary challenges in a humorous way all seem comfortingly familiar. I know what it is to live on a Hellmouth.
I first learned that I had Serotonin Syndrome when, after all my neurologist and psychiatrist shrugging sessions, I found the Mayo Clinic website actually has a Q&A forum. I wrote in, describing my various symptoms, and the circumstances under which they developed, and the doctor who was doing the forum said "Serotonin Syndrome" with an implied "duh" at the end. (I still have the emails). He naturally said I needed to consult with my doctors for an accurate diagnosis, but at that point I was inclined to take his word for it. I learned that Serotonin Syndrome can actually be fatal, and I had to acknowledge that at least I'd survived. The thing is that, even now, anything that stimulates Serotonin is still problematic for me, even sex. Sex has always made me stay awake a bit longer than my husband (the natural difference between the way women and men respond), but since 2003 I have to be really careful about when I "do it" or I'm up all night. Since I still prefer evening sex, it complicates the matter even further. If I'm actually stupid enough to eat chocolate and have sex on the same night, I can pretty much guarantee a heart roller coaster. At least then I know the cause, unlike all those nights when I have an episode for no apparent reason at all.
I'm still pondering the many drugs that people go through, trying to find the right one, and I feel it's worth noting that -- from where I stand -- the herbal stuff is just as problematic. Whether it's St. John's wort or Guarine, it all affects me just like the prescription ones do. With the exception of my very brief attempt to placate Dr. O's ongoing desire to cure me with drugs by taking one dose of Propranolol last month, I've been pretty much chemical free for three years... nothing stronger than Tylenol or Tums. Okay, and occasionally Ibuprofen. Really, on the whole, I think that's a good thing; it's given my system a little time to heal, regenerate, although I still feel like my nerves were just sort of stripped, I'm still so sensitized to so many things. I still can feel the weather changing when a storm front comes in. My husband thinks I'm just being poetic or something, but it is actually a physiological, experiential phenomenon for me... I can feel it coming. Maybe I should just hire myself out as a human barometer.
As for the lawsuit, I was looking up prospects again, and was struck by how many other people are doing the same. One blog comment to that effect had 955 hits, 538 hits on another, etc. Everybody's wondering, but nobody's doing. I can't help feeling a little frustrated by this, not just because none of us underdog formerly/currently depressed/anxious people seems to be able to summon the strength to really get the ball rolling. Either that or there aren't any lawyers out there who will take us "psychos" seriously, or are just afraid they'll have a hard time proving anything in court with such "unstable" clients. Or possibly, on the conspiracy theory end of the spectrum, the pharmaceutical companies have become really good at quashing any potential threats to their hegemony. There are obviously a lot of people who have been adversely affected by this drug, and I'm at a loss as to how it has just managed to fly under the radar. There was even a site that mentioned a teen suicide - you'd think that might garner some attention (not that I want to seem elated by that).
I don't know... just don't get why nobody's suing. Some firm in Oklahoma, I think it was, Caroline, Patel and Something, hung out a promising shingle back in 2005, but apparently nothing came of it. I emailed them and even called them, and the secretary sounded very bored with the whole thing. How far can a suit go with a bored secretary, er, administrative assistant? Where's my Erin Brokovich?
Well, Buffy beckons.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
A Great Article
Check out this link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/magazine/06antidepressant-t.html?_r=2&ei=5087%0A&em=
&en=cdeb03773a3deee0&ex=1178596800&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/magazine/06antidepressant-t.html?_r=2&ei=5087%0A&em=
&en=cdeb03773a3deee0&ex=1178596800&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Monday, October 29, 2007
Flashback - Here's a Lower Place
(from a journal entry in March 2004)
I have to write about this because there just isn't anybody to tell anymore. People just get tired of you being miserable, and they just don't want to hear it anymore, but I still have problems, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it, and sometimes I just don't know how to take it anymore.
Tonight I got up, my body tremoring, my mind racing, and I tried to do some yoga. While I was stretching, my mouth just started producing a lot of saliva, and I couldn't help drooling. When I tried to close my lips to hold in the spit, my mouth started twitching, and I just couldn't control it. Then, when I went to stand up, my bladder just sort of refused to hold it in too. Could I be less dignified?
(from a journal entry in June 2004)
I have this crazy eye twitch that comes and goes. I wish I could joke about it, but it just seems like one more straw on the camel's back. But that final one, really that came a couple of weeks back. Money has been so tight that there hasn't been much fun in the kids' lives, so I scrounged around the house and finally came up with 99 cents to go rent a kid video for them at Hastings. We got there, picked out the video, stood in line, and found out that my husband had got the last movie back late and we had a late fee. I had no money to pay for it. As we walked out of the store, the kids crying because they couldn't see the movie, me crying because I couldn't get a measly 99 cent movie for them, I thought, we must be the most pathetic sight in the world. I just sat with them on the bench in front of the store, all three of us tear-streaked and whimpering, and all I could think was that there was not a soul who would stop and help us out with a two dollar late fee. What a world we live in.
I have to write about this because there just isn't anybody to tell anymore. People just get tired of you being miserable, and they just don't want to hear it anymore, but I still have problems, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it, and sometimes I just don't know how to take it anymore.
Tonight I got up, my body tremoring, my mind racing, and I tried to do some yoga. While I was stretching, my mouth just started producing a lot of saliva, and I couldn't help drooling. When I tried to close my lips to hold in the spit, my mouth started twitching, and I just couldn't control it. Then, when I went to stand up, my bladder just sort of refused to hold it in too. Could I be less dignified?
(from a journal entry in June 2004)
I have this crazy eye twitch that comes and goes. I wish I could joke about it, but it just seems like one more straw on the camel's back. But that final one, really that came a couple of weeks back. Money has been so tight that there hasn't been much fun in the kids' lives, so I scrounged around the house and finally came up with 99 cents to go rent a kid video for them at Hastings. We got there, picked out the video, stood in line, and found out that my husband had got the last movie back late and we had a late fee. I had no money to pay for it. As we walked out of the store, the kids crying because they couldn't see the movie, me crying because I couldn't get a measly 99 cent movie for them, I thought, we must be the most pathetic sight in the world. I just sat with them on the bench in front of the store, all three of us tear-streaked and whimpering, and all I could think was that there was not a soul who would stop and help us out with a two dollar late fee. What a world we live in.
Finding the Rhythm
I'm still trying to get oriented after last month's illness marathon. Between the strep, the ear infections, the stomach bug and all, the kids and I missed a total of three weeks of school and work. We're all pretty much caught up now, but it seems to take me a little longer than it used to, once upon a time. Trying to get all the plates spinning at the same time again takes some doing, and one of the greatest tragedies of my "damage" is that I always question myself, question if it's just life or something permanently flawed in my brain. I think it must be easier for other people, because they seem to manage more, or seem somehow more heroic in their pathos. Me? I just manage to deal.
I've been surfing a little on the Web, looking at other people's experiences with Effexor. This blog was interesting:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/youropinions.php?opinionid=19018&p=2'
I'm perpetually struck by the ongoing pharmaceutical cornucopia that these people have endured, and continue to endure. I suppose I'm lucky in that I don't have much choice anymore about expermenting. I can't even overindulge in chocolate anymore without having pretty immediate consequences (tremors, heart palpitations, moodiness). It promotes clean living, I suppose. I've notices I feel a lot less neurologically fragile when I'm eating a lot of salads and fresh fruit, less fatty and starchy things. And the yoga really is the best thing I've found to quell the occasional intense nights. Would that I could better manage other stressors in my life, but one can only do so much about other people and commitments. It's always a balancing act, isn't it?
Right now I'm having some interesting hormonal craziness... that is to say my cycle is all over the place. The Effexor Event wreaked merry havoc with all my other autonomic functions for a while, but that part of my life had achieved some equilibrium for a change, until recently. Bad ultrasound: Doctor O's talking biopsy, and my husband is freaking out (after all, his Mom died not two years ago from cancer "from the waist down"). I'm feeling strangely detached, sort of clinically wondering what would happen if I had to have surgery and couldn't take pain meds. After all, my last close encounter with Morphine was not a happy memory. Hopefully, it's just something like endometriosis, or I'm just getting old.
Just a reflective note on the causality of my Effexor experience, still fantasizing from time to time about a law suit (sigh). I know that much of the current dysfunction of my brain is caused by the overdose of the Zoloft which I took the day after my withdrawal symptoms kicked in. I know (I'll explain how later) that this caused me to develop a rather pronounced case of "Serotonin Syndrome." But it is significant, and ultimately definitive in my mind, that I never would have overdosed on the Zoloft if I hadn't had such and extreme psychological reaction the the Effexor withdrawals, which -- among other things -- seriously impaired my ability to accurately assess how much medication I ought to be taking. I still think it ought to have a black label. "Warning: withdrawals from this are so severe that you might want to die or kill someone if you stop taking it. Don't." Which of course would be bully for the company because then anyone who started taking it could never stop... endless dinero.
I've been surfing a little on the Web, looking at other people's experiences with Effexor. This blog was interesting:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/youropinions.php?opinionid=19018&p=2'
I'm perpetually struck by the ongoing pharmaceutical cornucopia that these people have endured, and continue to endure. I suppose I'm lucky in that I don't have much choice anymore about expermenting. I can't even overindulge in chocolate anymore without having pretty immediate consequences (tremors, heart palpitations, moodiness). It promotes clean living, I suppose. I've notices I feel a lot less neurologically fragile when I'm eating a lot of salads and fresh fruit, less fatty and starchy things. And the yoga really is the best thing I've found to quell the occasional intense nights. Would that I could better manage other stressors in my life, but one can only do so much about other people and commitments. It's always a balancing act, isn't it?
Right now I'm having some interesting hormonal craziness... that is to say my cycle is all over the place. The Effexor Event wreaked merry havoc with all my other autonomic functions for a while, but that part of my life had achieved some equilibrium for a change, until recently. Bad ultrasound: Doctor O's talking biopsy, and my husband is freaking out (after all, his Mom died not two years ago from cancer "from the waist down"). I'm feeling strangely detached, sort of clinically wondering what would happen if I had to have surgery and couldn't take pain meds. After all, my last close encounter with Morphine was not a happy memory. Hopefully, it's just something like endometriosis, or I'm just getting old.
Just a reflective note on the causality of my Effexor experience, still fantasizing from time to time about a law suit (sigh). I know that much of the current dysfunction of my brain is caused by the overdose of the Zoloft which I took the day after my withdrawal symptoms kicked in. I know (I'll explain how later) that this caused me to develop a rather pronounced case of "Serotonin Syndrome." But it is significant, and ultimately definitive in my mind, that I never would have overdosed on the Zoloft if I hadn't had such and extreme psychological reaction the the Effexor withdrawals, which -- among other things -- seriously impaired my ability to accurately assess how much medication I ought to be taking. I still think it ought to have a black label. "Warning: withdrawals from this are so severe that you might want to die or kill someone if you stop taking it. Don't." Which of course would be bully for the company because then anyone who started taking it could never stop... endless dinero.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Lab Rats Aplenty
At Dr. E’s request, I started getting some personal counseling and attending a class in Dialectic Behavioral Therapy - DBT - so that I could learn better coping strategies for dealing with the distress I was forced to live with for the time being. I found myself in a room with several women that I would have, not long before, thought were very different from me. These women struggled with bipolar disorder, various personality disorders, addictions, run-ins with the law, abusive relationships, you name it. These were people that some might have considered the dregs of society, cast-offs from polite circles. In the passage of time, I was to discover that we were not so very different, not me and them, and not anybody else.
I felt a renewed sense of anger at the pharmaceutical companies, and the medical profession, as I watched these women who went from drug to drug - and I mean the legally prescribed ones - hoping for something to make their pain go away. I listened to the ways that the drugs failed them, the days spent in bed because they felt too dopey to do anything, the anxious days, the hopeful days when they thought something could actually help them, and the terrible crashes when those hopes were dashed. I empathized with them as I wondered how anyone could be expected to keep up appearances with such a barrage of chemicals going through your system for years and years. I kept thinking how much we, as a society, had failed them, how much we had failed ourselves.
I felt it wasn’t just the drug companies, but also the societal expectation of quick fixes in our modern world. If something is broken, you fix it. If something hurts, you take a pill. If the pill doesn’t work, then we don’t want to have to deal with the mess. We want everything neat and tidy, and if it’s not, it gets shoved into the closet where nobody has to look at it. Or in the nearest mental institution, if that’s were the mess can best be hidden. I was grateful that had not been my lot, but also mindful of how easily it might have been.
I also became mindful of just how easy it is to compartmentalize people into set ideas of what sums up their personalities. Even amongst those few professionals and laypeople who really understood the difference between schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, which was rare enough, there seemed to be a tendency to label a person - depressed, narcissistic, passive/aggressive. I became both fascinated and appalled at the readiness to stuff a person into her niche and leave her there. Nobody said anything to me about being anything other than depressed, having some anxiety, but because I was analyzing myself so much, I wondered if they didn’t think I had borderline personality disorder or co-dependent tendencies or Munchausen's syndrome. I thought, even if these were on the mark, which I didn’t think was really the case, there was so much more to me than that. I had gotten through so much hardship in life just out of sheer tenacity and a strong sense of my center. Where had that all gone, and why? I kept coming back to the impact of the Effexor.
I felt a renewed sense of anger at the pharmaceutical companies, and the medical profession, as I watched these women who went from drug to drug - and I mean the legally prescribed ones - hoping for something to make their pain go away. I listened to the ways that the drugs failed them, the days spent in bed because they felt too dopey to do anything, the anxious days, the hopeful days when they thought something could actually help them, and the terrible crashes when those hopes were dashed. I empathized with them as I wondered how anyone could be expected to keep up appearances with such a barrage of chemicals going through your system for years and years. I kept thinking how much we, as a society, had failed them, how much we had failed ourselves.
I felt it wasn’t just the drug companies, but also the societal expectation of quick fixes in our modern world. If something is broken, you fix it. If something hurts, you take a pill. If the pill doesn’t work, then we don’t want to have to deal with the mess. We want everything neat and tidy, and if it’s not, it gets shoved into the closet where nobody has to look at it. Or in the nearest mental institution, if that’s were the mess can best be hidden. I was grateful that had not been my lot, but also mindful of how easily it might have been.
I also became mindful of just how easy it is to compartmentalize people into set ideas of what sums up their personalities. Even amongst those few professionals and laypeople who really understood the difference between schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, which was rare enough, there seemed to be a tendency to label a person - depressed, narcissistic, passive/aggressive. I became both fascinated and appalled at the readiness to stuff a person into her niche and leave her there. Nobody said anything to me about being anything other than depressed, having some anxiety, but because I was analyzing myself so much, I wondered if they didn’t think I had borderline personality disorder or co-dependent tendencies or Munchausen's syndrome. I thought, even if these were on the mark, which I didn’t think was really the case, there was so much more to me than that. I had gotten through so much hardship in life just out of sheer tenacity and a strong sense of my center. Where had that all gone, and why? I kept coming back to the impact of the Effexor.
... and a Happy New Year
Another racing heart episode on New Years Eve found me at the ER again, by myself. My husband refused to drive me. The nurses scolded me for driving myself. By sheer luck, they actually caught the phenomenon early enough to record it on EKG. Sure enough, my heart was going at a good clip in what appeared to be a state of atrial fibrillation. My heart rhythm was definitely out of whack. The ER doctor told me the problem was common in 50 or 60 year olds, but pretty rare in 36 year olds. Upon follow up, Dr. O referred me to a cardiologist. He hooked me up to a “King of Hearts” monitor for 24 hours, which returned nothing conclusive, except that my heart occasionally did a little hopscotch. Nothing life threatening, just extremely disconcerting. I wasn't dying, it just felt like it. This did, however, push Dr. O to prescribe Atenolol, a beta-blocker, for me in an attempt to kept my heart rhythm and blood pressure regulated. It was supposed to maybe help with my anxiety as well.
My first few days on Atenolol were unpleasant, as it made me dopey, and my experience with other dopiness agents over the last few months made me simultaneously really anxious about feeling dopey, which was really a strange combination of things to feel. After a tearful conversation with my Dad, who had been on Atenolol for his heart, I stuck it out. After a couple of weeks it seemed to be helping some. I bought a heart monitor/blood pressure cuff to keep an eye on my progress. There were times when I felt my heart was racing again, but the monitor would reassure me that all was well, even if I was skipping a beat here or there, or fluttering a bit. On another tearful day, I had to make the decision not to go back to school for the semester, and not to accept the re-offered teaching assistantship. It was a painful choice; I knew the assistantship would not likely be offered again, and I felt beaten. But I knew I just wasn’t strong enough. I was barely staying on top of the housework and childcare.
My first few days on Atenolol were unpleasant, as it made me dopey, and my experience with other dopiness agents over the last few months made me simultaneously really anxious about feeling dopey, which was really a strange combination of things to feel. After a tearful conversation with my Dad, who had been on Atenolol for his heart, I stuck it out. After a couple of weeks it seemed to be helping some. I bought a heart monitor/blood pressure cuff to keep an eye on my progress. There were times when I felt my heart was racing again, but the monitor would reassure me that all was well, even if I was skipping a beat here or there, or fluttering a bit. On another tearful day, I had to make the decision not to go back to school for the semester, and not to accept the re-offered teaching assistantship. It was a painful choice; I knew the assistantship would not likely be offered again, and I felt beaten. But I knew I just wasn’t strong enough. I was barely staying on top of the housework and childcare.
Off the Radar
Throughout all this, in my dealings with everyone from the medical and psychological communities to my family and friends, I became painfully aware of how differently people - even professionals - treat those that they feel are mentally or emotionally unstable. I was no longer a person, I was a disease, and a scary one, because even the professionals only knew so much about it, and most of what they “know” is largely conjecture. Everything I said had to be questioned and examined for validity, because it might all just be in my mind. I was a double conundrum because the arsenal of treatments that the world has thus far come up with to address the kinds of problems I was having were of no use to me anymore. The risks of another anti-depressant tipping the scales for me into psychosis again were too great for me to even consider. Dr. O kept saying, “Somebody’s just going to have to bite the bullet and prescribe something for you.” I just wanted to scream at him and say, “Who exactly should that person be? Are you going to be the one to take responsibility for me losing it if things go sour? Who do you think will really be paying the price if anything were to happen to my kids? What guarantees can you give me that nothing bad will happen? NONE!”
My husband was still afraid to leave me alone with the kids for any length of time. He had avoided working because of this fear for several months now. It was hard for me to reassure him as I felt the fear myself. When it all came down, I blamed the Effexor. As our finances reeled out of control, I contemplated seeking financial redress for my situation. I really felt like somebody in the pharmaceutical industry should pay for having kept secret the fact that Effexor could have such devastating effects if stopped abruptly. There was no indication of this on the labeling, only the usual mumbo jumbo about consulting a physician before stopping or starting any medication. If I had had any real idea of how potentially dangerous it was, I never would have stopped the way I did. A lot of internet surfing led me to discover that Wyeth-Ayerst had indeed known about the potential for severe withdrawal for eight years. I was angry that they couldn’t call a spade a spade, and made such a charade of promoting Effexor as “non-habit forming.” Other searching led me to discover I was not alone in having had an adverse reaction to this drug, or difficulty quitting. I also found many other anti-depressants, including Zoloft and especially Paxil, were not the wonder drugs that had been promised, but instead left broken and wounded people in the wake of their use.
There were law firms who dealt in such matters, but their dockets were filled with Paxil projects, because the drug was higher profile at the moment due to some suicides in the news. Since I had not actually killed myself or my kids, I was not as much on the radar. I had not lost enough to be worth media attention. I also learned that, even if I could find somebody to take my case, it could be years before I got anything out of the drug company, if ever. I alternated between days of thinking that they really owed me a large sum of money for wreaking such havoc in my life, and thinking that I really just wanted them to change the labeling so it wouldn’t happen to anyone else. Eventually I signed a petition for the latter, and hoped I wouldn’t regret it later, that I hadn’t overlooked some fine print that precluded me from bringing suit later on if possible.
My husband was still afraid to leave me alone with the kids for any length of time. He had avoided working because of this fear for several months now. It was hard for me to reassure him as I felt the fear myself. When it all came down, I blamed the Effexor. As our finances reeled out of control, I contemplated seeking financial redress for my situation. I really felt like somebody in the pharmaceutical industry should pay for having kept secret the fact that Effexor could have such devastating effects if stopped abruptly. There was no indication of this on the labeling, only the usual mumbo jumbo about consulting a physician before stopping or starting any medication. If I had had any real idea of how potentially dangerous it was, I never would have stopped the way I did. A lot of internet surfing led me to discover that Wyeth-Ayerst had indeed known about the potential for severe withdrawal for eight years. I was angry that they couldn’t call a spade a spade, and made such a charade of promoting Effexor as “non-habit forming.” Other searching led me to discover I was not alone in having had an adverse reaction to this drug, or difficulty quitting. I also found many other anti-depressants, including Zoloft and especially Paxil, were not the wonder drugs that had been promised, but instead left broken and wounded people in the wake of their use.
There were law firms who dealt in such matters, but their dockets were filled with Paxil projects, because the drug was higher profile at the moment due to some suicides in the news. Since I had not actually killed myself or my kids, I was not as much on the radar. I had not lost enough to be worth media attention. I also learned that, even if I could find somebody to take my case, it could be years before I got anything out of the drug company, if ever. I alternated between days of thinking that they really owed me a large sum of money for wreaking such havoc in my life, and thinking that I really just wanted them to change the labeling so it wouldn’t happen to anyone else. Eventually I signed a petition for the latter, and hoped I wouldn’t regret it later, that I hadn’t overlooked some fine print that precluded me from bringing suit later on if possible.
Merry Christmas
When I returned, my husband was surprisingly reticent. We had some very frank discussions which were a great deal more civilized. We agreed to work on some things, together and separately, and actually spent some of the quality time together that my mother-in-law had hoped for. I began to think that we’d get through all this. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever be able to talk to my mother-in-law again. She’d hurt me even worse than Jason had. I felt that relationship had taken an unprecedented blow, and had no idea how it would be reconciled. (I would later write a letter that was meant to help, but ended up making matters worse). But I was finally able to get some much needed rest, exhausted to the point of collapse by my long journey and emotional ordeal. Waiting for the kids to return at Thanksgiving was still hard, but the time went by surprisingly fast. I was still physically and emotionally tattered, but their return was like a breath of fresh air, and rejuvenated me for several days, notwithstanding the occasional twitchiness, weakness, or pain.
The week before Christmas, my son was scheduled to have his tonsils out, something he badly needed and could not wait on. I prayed every day to have the strength to get through that ordeal. I barely decorated the house for Christmas, feeling just too overwhelmed as it was to take on any more than absolutely necessary. Many gifts I’d planned to give and activities I’d intended to attend just had to be let go. The day of the surgery arrived, and all was well, until my husband left me alone for a while at the hospital, and I began to panic that he would not return before our son awoke from the anesthesia. The shakes started up and I felt a horrible weakness take hold of me, which only made the problem worse because my greatest fear was not being able to be there when my son needed me most. Somehow, I found untapped reserves of strength, and my husband returned just in time. We managed to get through the day’s challenges, in spite of some petty bickering over how to comfort the boy, both of us being extremely hypersensitive at that point about who was the better parent.
It was the next five days till Christmas that my condition really deteriorated, staying up till all hours with a boy crying piteously from the pain. Jason lacked the patience to deal with his near hysterical sobbing. There was no one to do it but me, and I did the job willingly enough, but it took its toll on an already ravished nervous system. By Christmas Day, I was once again a physical and emotional wreck, and Jason and I bickered and eventually had a blowout after the kids went to bed. I shuddered through the night, trying to ignore my racing heart, too proud to ask Jason for any kind of help. The next day, after he was gone, I called my parents and Dr. O and begged for answers that were not forthcoming. Why was I so messed up? Wasn’t there anything, anybody, that could help me get better?
The week before Christmas, my son was scheduled to have his tonsils out, something he badly needed and could not wait on. I prayed every day to have the strength to get through that ordeal. I barely decorated the house for Christmas, feeling just too overwhelmed as it was to take on any more than absolutely necessary. Many gifts I’d planned to give and activities I’d intended to attend just had to be let go. The day of the surgery arrived, and all was well, until my husband left me alone for a while at the hospital, and I began to panic that he would not return before our son awoke from the anesthesia. The shakes started up and I felt a horrible weakness take hold of me, which only made the problem worse because my greatest fear was not being able to be there when my son needed me most. Somehow, I found untapped reserves of strength, and my husband returned just in time. We managed to get through the day’s challenges, in spite of some petty bickering over how to comfort the boy, both of us being extremely hypersensitive at that point about who was the better parent.
It was the next five days till Christmas that my condition really deteriorated, staying up till all hours with a boy crying piteously from the pain. Jason lacked the patience to deal with his near hysterical sobbing. There was no one to do it but me, and I did the job willingly enough, but it took its toll on an already ravished nervous system. By Christmas Day, I was once again a physical and emotional wreck, and Jason and I bickered and eventually had a blowout after the kids went to bed. I shuddered through the night, trying to ignore my racing heart, too proud to ask Jason for any kind of help. The next day, after he was gone, I called my parents and Dr. O and begged for answers that were not forthcoming. Why was I so messed up? Wasn’t there anything, anybody, that could help me get better?
When It Hits the Fan
My husband has two married siblings who live in the same town, his home town, and a teenage sister, who all dote on my kids. I also have a sister who lives there, and says she is willing to pitch in. I know they will be alright, but I still worry about them, mostly because I’m not so sure about myself.
My own parents are aging. I know there are more fail-safes with my in-laws, and the environment is one that is familiar to the kids, nothing new to adjust to, like my parents’ new apartment. My decision also has something to do with an inability to admit failure to my own parents.
My mother-in-law, on the other hand, has seen me falling all over myself for the past seven years, pretty much. She knows me in all my current persevering tenacity as well as my most pathetic weakness. This is both a source of comfort and bitterly galling. I think that I am blessed to have a mother-in-law who does not lord it over me for having this knowledge. I will find out otherwise in a few days. But it makes me feel particularly vulnerable the night they leave, especially if my marriage were to permanently go south. I say permanently, because its been heading in that direction for quite a while now since I got sick, and I keep hoping somehow we’ll be able to pull the nose up out of this dive, but I’m currently at a loss as to how.
So now, the only thing that I feel I’ve ever been particularly good at, motherhood, is in the balance, my offspring in the hands of what could prove to be “the enemy” if things don’t change, and I have no power to do anything about it because I hurt too damn much. I didn’t think I could undertake the trip with the kids, although I was invited, because I thought I’d be a certifiable basket case after traveling six hours on winding roads in winter weather after a trip to the doctor the other day made me cry like a baby every time we hit a bump. But now, in the middle of the night, I think I’d be willing to undertake the journey on foot, in a blizzard, barefoot, just so long as I didn’t have to be so afraid I might lose my babies for good.
Over the previous three days, with the kids safely out of the picture, all the stress that my husband had been dealing with reached critical mass, and without an audience there for him to feel self-conscious about, he had the freedom to tell me exactly what he thought of me and everything I’d been “putting” him through. He was not particularly kind about it. In fact, he was quite brutal. At first I tried to defend myself, and it was fighting, but after a while I was just too tired and hurt too much to fight, but he just kept verbally pounding on me, and it wasn’t fighting anymore, just him taking out his frustrations. By the end of the three days, when he stopped yelling at me at about 3 a.m., I was a physiological mess, and drove myself to the hospital again, heart racing, head pounding, extremities shaking wildly. When the ER doctor essentially shrugged me off, saying he didn’t know what else could be done for me, I went home.
I sat in the car, a tremoring bundle of painful and dysfunctional nerves, and knew I simply could not go into my home and deal with my husband for one more second, or I would go mad or strangle him. I felt like I had imposed on all my friends in town far too much lately, and could not impose on them any further. I contemplated going to a hotel for a day or two, but thought my husband might think I was abandoning him, or fear I was getting suicidal again. The thoughts about my children that had haunted me the previous night came to mind again, and all I could think of was that I desperately wanted to be with them. Letting them go had felt like the worst kind of defeat, and I just needed to feel like I mattered in their lives. I missed them so much, and I knew that if they were around my husband wouldn’t have been so brutal in his verbal attacks on me. I just wanted them home. I decided that I would just get on the bus and go to them, and if I needed a couple of days to recuperate before we came back, I thought surely my mother-in-law would allow me that. After all, initially she had invited me to join them. I just hadn’t thought at the time I could handle the trip. Now I knew I had to.
My parents' new locale was midway in my journey, and they greeted me with both warmth and concern. For a little bit, it was like coming in out of the cold. I spoke to both my husband and mother-in-law on the phone briefly. My honey spoke to me like I was a dangerous lunatic, and his biggest concern was that I was not going to run off with the kids and endanger them. I was insulted that he would even think that, and hung up on him. My mother-in-law sounded just plain mad. I hadn’t expected that, but I accepted that she might be disappointed that I wasn’t spending the time working on my marriage, or that she’d have to put up with another houseguest after all. It really had not even entered my thoughts that she might think I was abandoning him. It seemed obvious to me that, if I was planning on leaving him for good, that the last place I’d want to go was to his mother. It wasn’t so obvious to her, I guess.
Perhaps my judgment was impaired, because even my Dad expressed concern that I was running straight from the swarm of bees right into the hive. I still believed that everything would be alright once I could be with the kids. I refused my parents invitation to stay for a day because I just wanted to see the kids so badly. My sister came and took me on to my in-laws, where I arrived too late to do much more than kiss the kids good night and go to bed. Not that I slept.
In the morning, once everyone else was off to work and school, I found myself alone with my mother-in-law. Out of courtesy, knowing she was not happy with me, I gave her a chance to express her feelings before I tried to justify my presence. I had no idea what I was in for. Operating under the assumption that I was leaving my husband and had come to take the kids, she let me have it. She told me everything she had ever thought was wrong with me and then some. She called me a host of colorful names and accused me of all manner of wrong-doing in my marriage and in my dealings with people altogether. I was so astounded, so unprepared for this attack, that I could barely summon a response, much less a defense. I knew in my heart she was wrong on most counts, but there was just enough truth in some of her accusations to sting me to the core. I knew I had not been easy to live with over the last few months. I knew it had been hard on my marriage and the kids, and I hated myself for it anyway, so for her to rub it in my face and call me the Wife from Hell and an Unfit Mother, etc. etc. just made me feel horrifically awful.
Perhaps the only thing that saved me was her accusation that I had been selfish in sending the kids to stay with her, because I knew wholeheartedly that was wrong. Letting them go had been one of the hardest, most selfless things I had ever done, and I knew that deeply in my soul. I also knew deeply in my soul that I was still too sick to take care of them properly, that they were in good hands where they were, and that I could not stay. I called my sister, and for the second time in a week I had to relinquish the care of my kids to someone else, which had been hard when I trusted my in-laws to do right by me, but a thousand times harder this time around.
I had no choice now but to return home to prove my husband and his mother wrong about my intention of bailing out of my marriage. It probably would have been beneficial to my health to stay with my parents a couple of more days, as they invited again, but I just couldn’t let those unfounded fears fester. It wasn’t a question of pride, but rather of knowing that if I balked now, it would be my kids that would ultimately pay the price. If anyone was going to bail on this marriage, it wouldn't be me. I could not risk my children ever believing I would intentionally give up on our family.
(Unknown to any of us at the time, my mother-in-law was herself ill at this time from what would prove to be fatal cancer. She was also having her own domestic squabble with some of her siblings, and my kids, my problems, and I were just three things too many for her to handle with grace. As a result of this fiasco of a trip, she and I did not speak to each other for over a year, a year I sadly regret now that she is gone. We made peace with each other before her passing, but we both said things that permanently altered what had once been a friendly relationship. Do I blame myself or her? A little. Do I blame the cancer? Not at all. Do I blame the Effexor? Most definitely!)
My own parents are aging. I know there are more fail-safes with my in-laws, and the environment is one that is familiar to the kids, nothing new to adjust to, like my parents’ new apartment. My decision also has something to do with an inability to admit failure to my own parents.
My mother-in-law, on the other hand, has seen me falling all over myself for the past seven years, pretty much. She knows me in all my current persevering tenacity as well as my most pathetic weakness. This is both a source of comfort and bitterly galling. I think that I am blessed to have a mother-in-law who does not lord it over me for having this knowledge. I will find out otherwise in a few days. But it makes me feel particularly vulnerable the night they leave, especially if my marriage were to permanently go south. I say permanently, because its been heading in that direction for quite a while now since I got sick, and I keep hoping somehow we’ll be able to pull the nose up out of this dive, but I’m currently at a loss as to how.
So now, the only thing that I feel I’ve ever been particularly good at, motherhood, is in the balance, my offspring in the hands of what could prove to be “the enemy” if things don’t change, and I have no power to do anything about it because I hurt too damn much. I didn’t think I could undertake the trip with the kids, although I was invited, because I thought I’d be a certifiable basket case after traveling six hours on winding roads in winter weather after a trip to the doctor the other day made me cry like a baby every time we hit a bump. But now, in the middle of the night, I think I’d be willing to undertake the journey on foot, in a blizzard, barefoot, just so long as I didn’t have to be so afraid I might lose my babies for good.
Over the previous three days, with the kids safely out of the picture, all the stress that my husband had been dealing with reached critical mass, and without an audience there for him to feel self-conscious about, he had the freedom to tell me exactly what he thought of me and everything I’d been “putting” him through. He was not particularly kind about it. In fact, he was quite brutal. At first I tried to defend myself, and it was fighting, but after a while I was just too tired and hurt too much to fight, but he just kept verbally pounding on me, and it wasn’t fighting anymore, just him taking out his frustrations. By the end of the three days, when he stopped yelling at me at about 3 a.m., I was a physiological mess, and drove myself to the hospital again, heart racing, head pounding, extremities shaking wildly. When the ER doctor essentially shrugged me off, saying he didn’t know what else could be done for me, I went home.
I sat in the car, a tremoring bundle of painful and dysfunctional nerves, and knew I simply could not go into my home and deal with my husband for one more second, or I would go mad or strangle him. I felt like I had imposed on all my friends in town far too much lately, and could not impose on them any further. I contemplated going to a hotel for a day or two, but thought my husband might think I was abandoning him, or fear I was getting suicidal again. The thoughts about my children that had haunted me the previous night came to mind again, and all I could think of was that I desperately wanted to be with them. Letting them go had felt like the worst kind of defeat, and I just needed to feel like I mattered in their lives. I missed them so much, and I knew that if they were around my husband wouldn’t have been so brutal in his verbal attacks on me. I just wanted them home. I decided that I would just get on the bus and go to them, and if I needed a couple of days to recuperate before we came back, I thought surely my mother-in-law would allow me that. After all, initially she had invited me to join them. I just hadn’t thought at the time I could handle the trip. Now I knew I had to.
My parents' new locale was midway in my journey, and they greeted me with both warmth and concern. For a little bit, it was like coming in out of the cold. I spoke to both my husband and mother-in-law on the phone briefly. My honey spoke to me like I was a dangerous lunatic, and his biggest concern was that I was not going to run off with the kids and endanger them. I was insulted that he would even think that, and hung up on him. My mother-in-law sounded just plain mad. I hadn’t expected that, but I accepted that she might be disappointed that I wasn’t spending the time working on my marriage, or that she’d have to put up with another houseguest after all. It really had not even entered my thoughts that she might think I was abandoning him. It seemed obvious to me that, if I was planning on leaving him for good, that the last place I’d want to go was to his mother. It wasn’t so obvious to her, I guess.
Perhaps my judgment was impaired, because even my Dad expressed concern that I was running straight from the swarm of bees right into the hive. I still believed that everything would be alright once I could be with the kids. I refused my parents invitation to stay for a day because I just wanted to see the kids so badly. My sister came and took me on to my in-laws, where I arrived too late to do much more than kiss the kids good night and go to bed. Not that I slept.
In the morning, once everyone else was off to work and school, I found myself alone with my mother-in-law. Out of courtesy, knowing she was not happy with me, I gave her a chance to express her feelings before I tried to justify my presence. I had no idea what I was in for. Operating under the assumption that I was leaving my husband and had come to take the kids, she let me have it. She told me everything she had ever thought was wrong with me and then some. She called me a host of colorful names and accused me of all manner of wrong-doing in my marriage and in my dealings with people altogether. I was so astounded, so unprepared for this attack, that I could barely summon a response, much less a defense. I knew in my heart she was wrong on most counts, but there was just enough truth in some of her accusations to sting me to the core. I knew I had not been easy to live with over the last few months. I knew it had been hard on my marriage and the kids, and I hated myself for it anyway, so for her to rub it in my face and call me the Wife from Hell and an Unfit Mother, etc. etc. just made me feel horrifically awful.
Perhaps the only thing that saved me was her accusation that I had been selfish in sending the kids to stay with her, because I knew wholeheartedly that was wrong. Letting them go had been one of the hardest, most selfless things I had ever done, and I knew that deeply in my soul. I also knew deeply in my soul that I was still too sick to take care of them properly, that they were in good hands where they were, and that I could not stay. I called my sister, and for the second time in a week I had to relinquish the care of my kids to someone else, which had been hard when I trusted my in-laws to do right by me, but a thousand times harder this time around.
I had no choice now but to return home to prove my husband and his mother wrong about my intention of bailing out of my marriage. It probably would have been beneficial to my health to stay with my parents a couple of more days, as they invited again, but I just couldn’t let those unfounded fears fester. It wasn’t a question of pride, but rather of knowing that if I balked now, it would be my kids that would ultimately pay the price. If anyone was going to bail on this marriage, it wouldn't be me. I could not risk my children ever believing I would intentionally give up on our family.
(Unknown to any of us at the time, my mother-in-law was herself ill at this time from what would prove to be fatal cancer. She was also having her own domestic squabble with some of her siblings, and my kids, my problems, and I were just three things too many for her to handle with grace. As a result of this fiasco of a trip, she and I did not speak to each other for over a year, a year I sadly regret now that she is gone. We made peace with each other before her passing, but we both said things that permanently altered what had once been a friendly relationship. Do I blame myself or her? A little. Do I blame the cancer? Not at all. Do I blame the Effexor? Most definitely!)
Another Darkness Approaches
By the end of October I’d been to the emergency room again with another episode of my heart racing out of control and my tremors coming back. This time it was precipitated by a challenging week involving no less stressful an event than taking the GRE. The test itself had literally made my brain hurt, but I hadn’t guessed it would result in another setback physiologically. Jason was starting to think it was all in my head because every time I went to the hospital, I came home with no definitive answers from the doctors. All I knew was that I felt like my heart was going to explode, and I figured that if it did, I ought to be at the hospital.
Then came the strep throat. What might have been a merely unpleasant bout with a nasty bug for anybody else was a serious blow to my system. The pain in my throat was so intense I found it difficult to swallow, and it rapidly spread to include my head, neck, and shoulders. The stress of the pain in turn triggered my others symptoms, and the shaking and emotional roller coaster ride became more magnified. Another trip to the ER, and the doctors explored the possibility of meningitis. A painful spinal tap followed. They gave me some morphine to ease my discomfort, but it made me shake more and I felt like my body was coming unglued.
The coming and going of me, back and forth to the hospital and doctors, as well as the steady stream of different caregivers were starting to take their toll on my kids, and they’d both been wetting the bed. I felt like a horrible mother, and I knew that they needed some stability for a while that I was simply unable to provide for them at the time. I tried to think of where they would be most comfortable besides home. I called my mother-in-law, and she and my husband’s brother came the next day.
My biggest mistake was in being very open with them about everything that had happened, and was happening. Especially problematic was my revealing to them what my feelings had been that awful morning in September, and my fears since that time. I even made the unfortunate decision to mention Andrea Yates and Susan Smith, thinking it would help them understand how badly I needed their help, how I did not want to end up like those women. “Our brain chemistry is so fragile,“ I said. “I’m so afraid that there, but for the grace of God, go I.“ I trusted these people, and in my naiveté and desperation did not think about the fact that, to most people, even speaking of such things is unthinkable. In essence, I horrified my in-laws, but they did not give any immediate indication of this at the time. Rather, they very calmly took charge of my children and left me alone with my husband in the hopes that he and I would “work something out.”
(It was not until a couple of years later (ago) that I fully came to appreciate how hard all this was on my husband. I was too caught up in my own trauma to see how awful it was for him. He eventually confided in me that along about this point in time, he found himself in the shower on night, huddled on the floor, shaking, feeling like he just couldn't take anymore. Despite what transpired thereafter, it is much to his credit that he is still with me.)
Then came the strep throat. What might have been a merely unpleasant bout with a nasty bug for anybody else was a serious blow to my system. The pain in my throat was so intense I found it difficult to swallow, and it rapidly spread to include my head, neck, and shoulders. The stress of the pain in turn triggered my others symptoms, and the shaking and emotional roller coaster ride became more magnified. Another trip to the ER, and the doctors explored the possibility of meningitis. A painful spinal tap followed. They gave me some morphine to ease my discomfort, but it made me shake more and I felt like my body was coming unglued.
The coming and going of me, back and forth to the hospital and doctors, as well as the steady stream of different caregivers were starting to take their toll on my kids, and they’d both been wetting the bed. I felt like a horrible mother, and I knew that they needed some stability for a while that I was simply unable to provide for them at the time. I tried to think of where they would be most comfortable besides home. I called my mother-in-law, and she and my husband’s brother came the next day.
My biggest mistake was in being very open with them about everything that had happened, and was happening. Especially problematic was my revealing to them what my feelings had been that awful morning in September, and my fears since that time. I even made the unfortunate decision to mention Andrea Yates and Susan Smith, thinking it would help them understand how badly I needed their help, how I did not want to end up like those women. “Our brain chemistry is so fragile,“ I said. “I’m so afraid that there, but for the grace of God, go I.“ I trusted these people, and in my naiveté and desperation did not think about the fact that, to most people, even speaking of such things is unthinkable. In essence, I horrified my in-laws, but they did not give any immediate indication of this at the time. Rather, they very calmly took charge of my children and left me alone with my husband in the hopes that he and I would “work something out.”
(It was not until a couple of years later (ago) that I fully came to appreciate how hard all this was on my husband. I was too caught up in my own trauma to see how awful it was for him. He eventually confided in me that along about this point in time, he found himself in the shower on night, huddled on the floor, shaking, feeling like he just couldn't take anymore. Despite what transpired thereafter, it is much to his credit that he is still with me.)
The Constant Guinea Pig
At the end of the two weeks, I woke up one morning and my tremors seemed to have resolved altogether. I still felt a little inwardly wobbly, but found unsuspected reserves of energy to catch up on all the things I’d been missing out on. I was on fire, and my husband commented that he’d never seen me so energetic. The only problem was, I couldn’t turn off at night. All night long, my mind would go non-stop with plans, fears, creative ideas, dreadful possibilities, inventions, stories, both good and bad memories, etc. At times, my mind would get going so fast that it was like there was a high-speed slideshow going on in my head. It was wonderful and terrible at the same time. I secretly feared another psychotic break. I said little to my husband, not wanting to rouse his fears. I avoided my children, which impacted them negatively, but not as negatively as I feared too much contact might. I became increasingly dependant on other people to take care of them. My husband’s family, my family, friends and neighbors all took their turns. It broke my heart. I loved them so much and felt so inadequate, but dared not risk their safety for the sake of my own pride or selfish needs.
I shared my concerns with Dr.‘s O and E. They were encouraged by the resolution of my tremors, but concerned about the nightly episodes. Together, they decided that perhaps I simply needed to get a good night’s rest in order to heal properly. Atavan, a "widely trusted" tranquilizer, was prescribed as a simple sleep aid. The hope was that whatever had been switched on by the Effexor would be switched off by the Atavan. Jason was dubious about how it would work, but I felt I had no other choice. I just wanted things to be normal again.
My parents had been in town and were planning on leaving the day after I tried the Atavan. The night before, I took it a half hour before bedtime, as indicated, and as the half-hour passed, I could feel tendrils of ice permeating my brain. I waited for the familiar feeling of oblivion associated with general anesthesia, a sensation I was familiar with from my ceasarean sections, but it never came. Instead, the Atavan seized my brain in a grip of anxiety as fierce as anything I’d yet experienced. My entire body again began to shake, a rushing sensation pulsed in my head and ears, and I felt as if I was being chased by a pack of murderous criminals. I tried to go within myself, again, like I’d learned to do while in labor, and had better success this time than I’d had with the Effexor. I managed to get through the night without waking myhusband. But I was a mess the next day. My parents were gone, and my husband was too fixated in righteous indignation about knowing that the Atavan wouldn’t work to be sympathetic. We fought all day, and at the end of it, I was back in the emergency room, shaking violently and having genuinely suicidal thoughts for the first time since I was a teenager.
A friend from church came to the hospital and took me to her house for a few days, with the kids. She was convinced that I just needed a break from the pressures of married life, and a little distance might provide perspective. Meanwhile, Dr.’s O and E were leaning towards a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, based on some traumas I’d had earlier in life, but were still trying to rule out physiological causes of my distress. Being prescribers of medicine by profession, however, they were unwilling at that point to consider that the Effexor may have actually caused permanent damage or a traumatic experience itself. After all, it was supposed to be a beneficial drug. They sent me to Dr. M, a neurologist, to rule out the possibility of some congenital defect or progressive degenerative disease. She analyzed my cat scan, an MRI, and had me perform a number of tasks and movements to analyze how my nerves were responding throughout my body. Like Dr.’s O and E, she came up blank. The good news, she told me, was that I didn’t appear to have Parkinson’s Disease, Essential Tremor, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, or a few other disorders she mentioned. I agreed this was good news, but it still left me with no answers.
I shared my concerns with Dr.‘s O and E. They were encouraged by the resolution of my tremors, but concerned about the nightly episodes. Together, they decided that perhaps I simply needed to get a good night’s rest in order to heal properly. Atavan, a "widely trusted" tranquilizer, was prescribed as a simple sleep aid. The hope was that whatever had been switched on by the Effexor would be switched off by the Atavan. Jason was dubious about how it would work, but I felt I had no other choice. I just wanted things to be normal again.
My parents had been in town and were planning on leaving the day after I tried the Atavan. The night before, I took it a half hour before bedtime, as indicated, and as the half-hour passed, I could feel tendrils of ice permeating my brain. I waited for the familiar feeling of oblivion associated with general anesthesia, a sensation I was familiar with from my ceasarean sections, but it never came. Instead, the Atavan seized my brain in a grip of anxiety as fierce as anything I’d yet experienced. My entire body again began to shake, a rushing sensation pulsed in my head and ears, and I felt as if I was being chased by a pack of murderous criminals. I tried to go within myself, again, like I’d learned to do while in labor, and had better success this time than I’d had with the Effexor. I managed to get through the night without waking myhusband. But I was a mess the next day. My parents were gone, and my husband was too fixated in righteous indignation about knowing that the Atavan wouldn’t work to be sympathetic. We fought all day, and at the end of it, I was back in the emergency room, shaking violently and having genuinely suicidal thoughts for the first time since I was a teenager.
A friend from church came to the hospital and took me to her house for a few days, with the kids. She was convinced that I just needed a break from the pressures of married life, and a little distance might provide perspective. Meanwhile, Dr.’s O and E were leaning towards a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, based on some traumas I’d had earlier in life, but were still trying to rule out physiological causes of my distress. Being prescribers of medicine by profession, however, they were unwilling at that point to consider that the Effexor may have actually caused permanent damage or a traumatic experience itself. After all, it was supposed to be a beneficial drug. They sent me to Dr. M, a neurologist, to rule out the possibility of some congenital defect or progressive degenerative disease. She analyzed my cat scan, an MRI, and had me perform a number of tasks and movements to analyze how my nerves were responding throughout my body. Like Dr.’s O and E, she came up blank. The good news, she told me, was that I didn’t appear to have Parkinson’s Disease, Essential Tremor, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, or a few other disorders she mentioned. I agreed this was good news, but it still left me with no answers.
THE INITIAL EFFEXOR EVENT, PART 3
A couple of hours after my first dose of Zoloft, I was able to stop crying and drift off again into a restless sleep. I kept to myself, letting my husband, my friend, and my other neighbor manage the kids. About twelve hours after my first dose, I felt the horror descending upon me again, so I took another dose. After about another twelve hours, the feeling of slippage started again, so I took another dose. I took four doses over the next 48 hours.
At about 5 a.m. Monday morning, I awoke from a dreamless sleep to a state of total panic. My brain, not just my mind but the organ itself, felt very, very wrong. A feeling of pain and pressure was building like a dam about to burst. My heart, like a gathering storm, began to beat faster and faster. My entire body began to tremor uncontrollably; I feared a seizure might be imminent. I woke Jason up and told him he had to take me to the hospital immediately. He piled the kids into the car and took me to the ER.
Over the next several hours, I was hooked up to monitors and poked and prodded. A cat scan indicated that I had not had a stroke, which was my first fear. My heart appeared to be healthy, no blockages or damage that might account for any sort of heart attack, no indication of heart disease, although it kept racing erratically, bouncing between 80 and over 160 beats per minute. My normal resting heart rate had always been around 60. They injected me with Benadryl, which rather than making me relax, as they hoped, made my heart race more, and made me feel like I was climbing the walls. As the day wore on, however, the most puzzling development was the tremors. They went from convulsive to almost graceful remembered gestures. I felt like the girl in the tale “The Red Shoes”, who couldn’t stop dancing, except it was mostly in my hands, which couldn’t stop typing, playing the piano, writing, and making other familiar movements. If I concentrated very hard, I could stop the movement, but it took a great deal of effort. My right leg also kept moving of its own accord.
Dr. W, who was on call for Dr. O’s office, came to talk to me and told me she thought this movement might be tardive dyskinesia, a disorder that is associated with prolonged use of anti-psychotic drugs. She'd never seen it with anti-depressants, she said, but it fit the symptoms. I made a decision to tell her about my alarming thoughts about my children, and she labeled it a psychotic break. She prescribed Zyprexa to help me sleep and keep the horror at bay. I spent another night in the hospital, then they sent me home with the hope that once the Effexor and Zoloft worked their way out of my system, my symptoms would resolve.
The following two weeks were exhausting. My tremors gradually began to resolve, but my nights were filled with both amazing and terrible dreams. The Zyprexa worked for about three days, after which it caused me to tremor more and sleep less. Dr. E, a psychiatrist to whom Dr. O had referred me for management of my drugs, was at a loss. She’d never seen anyone respond to Zyprexa like I was responding. It was generally supposed to have a calming effect. She took me off of it and pondered what to do with me next.
At about 5 a.m. Monday morning, I awoke from a dreamless sleep to a state of total panic. My brain, not just my mind but the organ itself, felt very, very wrong. A feeling of pain and pressure was building like a dam about to burst. My heart, like a gathering storm, began to beat faster and faster. My entire body began to tremor uncontrollably; I feared a seizure might be imminent. I woke Jason up and told him he had to take me to the hospital immediately. He piled the kids into the car and took me to the ER.
Over the next several hours, I was hooked up to monitors and poked and prodded. A cat scan indicated that I had not had a stroke, which was my first fear. My heart appeared to be healthy, no blockages or damage that might account for any sort of heart attack, no indication of heart disease, although it kept racing erratically, bouncing between 80 and over 160 beats per minute. My normal resting heart rate had always been around 60. They injected me with Benadryl, which rather than making me relax, as they hoped, made my heart race more, and made me feel like I was climbing the walls. As the day wore on, however, the most puzzling development was the tremors. They went from convulsive to almost graceful remembered gestures. I felt like the girl in the tale “The Red Shoes”, who couldn’t stop dancing, except it was mostly in my hands, which couldn’t stop typing, playing the piano, writing, and making other familiar movements. If I concentrated very hard, I could stop the movement, but it took a great deal of effort. My right leg also kept moving of its own accord.
Dr. W, who was on call for Dr. O’s office, came to talk to me and told me she thought this movement might be tardive dyskinesia, a disorder that is associated with prolonged use of anti-psychotic drugs. She'd never seen it with anti-depressants, she said, but it fit the symptoms. I made a decision to tell her about my alarming thoughts about my children, and she labeled it a psychotic break. She prescribed Zyprexa to help me sleep and keep the horror at bay. I spent another night in the hospital, then they sent me home with the hope that once the Effexor and Zoloft worked their way out of my system, my symptoms would resolve.
The following two weeks were exhausting. My tremors gradually began to resolve, but my nights were filled with both amazing and terrible dreams. The Zyprexa worked for about three days, after which it caused me to tremor more and sleep less. Dr. E, a psychiatrist to whom Dr. O had referred me for management of my drugs, was at a loss. She’d never seen anyone respond to Zyprexa like I was responding. It was generally supposed to have a calming effect. She took me off of it and pondered what to do with me next.
THE INITIAL EFFEXOR EVENT, PART 2
By Friday night, I felt so awful, I considered having my husband take me to the hospital, but I was not running a fever. I thought it was extremely odd that I should feel so horribly flu-ish and not be feverish. The sounds of the television and the kids rambunctious play in the living room made me feel like I was going to start screaming. All my attempts to tune out the sound in the apartment were failing miserably, so I went outside to sit on a lawn chair by the front door. The cool night air felt good on my overly sensitized skin, but the sound of the parking lot light seemed unusually loud, more like an aggressive buzz-saw than the gentle hum I‘d come to expect. I could hear cars that sounded miles away, and voices that seemed to be both a few hundred yards away, and right next to me. The porch-light had a vivid corona around it, and I began to realize that my peripheral vision was altered, having a psychedelic corona of its own. It suddenly dawned on me that I felt poisoned, that this was not like being sick with some rogue virus or bacteria. My body was completely toxic. It was trying to compensate for having been chemically altered, and it was not doing a very good job. My insides were a roiling, tumultuous mess. My system was not being able to cope with the chemical changes happening within it.
I was getting cold fast, shaking, my body not being clear on how to adjust to the change in air temperature, so I went back inside, insisting that my husband turn off the TV and put the kids to bed. I thought I couldn’t possibly get much worse. I was beginning to feel like I was drowning. I didn’t know it was going to be a long way down yet before I reached bottom.
As they often did, and normally would have been okay doing, the kids resisted being sent to bed, and my husband turned the TV down rather than off. The urge to scream kept rising in my throat, but I suppressed it, still knowing that my children did not deserve to be yelled at due to my weakness. They finally drifted off, but my husband continued to watch Daredevil, a movie which might have otherwise been interesting to me. But due to my altered state, the dark sounds of fighting and the eerie music seemed to be emanating pure evil. I could sense it creeping in under the bedroom door. I felt certain that my husband was inviting Satan into our midst by watching such a demonic show.
I pleaded with him to turn it off, and he just looked at me like I was nuts, which I pretty much was by then. My memory of what exactly transpired after that is a little disjointed because I was disjointed. I remember thinking I was really, really cold, and I couldn’t get warm. I remember thinking a fire would warm me up. I remember having a moment of lucidity in which I realized we weren’t really equipped for a fire, that the only place I could start a fire without danger was in the barbecue. I remember not being sure how to start a fire, and thinking that the cardboard from the Kleenex box I had just emptied would make good kindling as I shredded it. I remember Jason stopping me as I searched frantically for the matches. I remember him having to drag me bodily from the door, while I clawed at his arms and wailed at him.
The next thing I remember was feeling completely lost, to God and humanity alike. I was in a place where nobody could reach me. Jason was trying. For all I know, God was really trying. I kept trying, to think happy thoughts, to try to get a handle on myself. I closed my eyes and tried to find a safe place within myself, but there was none. Every image, every memory that had ever been special to me, even sacred, any thing which I had ever associated with peace and/or escape was horribly disfigured, distorted, corrupted. The harder I tried to conjure some picture or feeling to soothe myself, the more grotesquely they became altered. Songs became dissonant and evil sounding, peoples faces became death masks, acts of kindness turned to acts of violence, and worse. My head was filled with unspeakable atrocities and abominations. Within me, humanity was on the brink of total, unforgivable annihilation.
Jason prayed with me, for me, over me, tried to bless me. He was probably wondering at that point where God was too. I finally drifted off into restless, whimpering sleep. I imagine my sweet husband really hoped and believed at that point that the worst was over. My dreams were filled with unspeakable nightmares. I woke the next morning in a cold sweat, unable to figure out where I was at first. Jason was exhausted too, so I let him sleep, and tried to manage the kids as best I could. Their noise drove me outdoors again for a time, where again I was struck by the feeling that I was poisoned. I was about to embark upon my darkest hour.
What transpired next probably only took about a second, but the details were complicated. My mind went through a series of thought processes which seemed logical at that time. My reasoning was this: if I was feeling poisoned, then surely someone must be poisoning me, and who would have the motive or opportunity to poison me but my husband. If he was trying to poison me, then he must really want me to die, and what a horrible person he must be to want to kill his wife. If I were to die, he would be left alone with the children, and did I really want a man who would kill his own wife to be taking care of my children? No, but what could I do to prevent them from falling into his hands after I was dead. I had no friends or family who were in a position to assume their care, even if it weren’t a father’s prerogative to get custody upon a wife’s death. They would be in his clutches, and there would be no one to know what danger they were in. The only way I could save them from him was to take them with me to the grave.
As soon as my thinking got that far, a power greater than me took over, fortunately. In retrospect, I must assume God was answering prayers at that point, prayers that nobody knew needed to be answered. In a state beyond reason, I had the strongest desire to take the kids to my friend’s next door. I gathered my little chicks together and walked them over. My friend could tell right away that something was very wrong with me. As soon as she asked, I dissolved into sobs. She unflinchingly assumed care of my kids, but had the presence of mind to go a step further. She asked me for my doctor’s name.
After a murmured conversation with Dr. O, she told me to go home and resume taking my Zoloft, doctor’s orders, and she would watch the kids. He hoped that it would help lift me out of the depression I seemed to be undergoing, since it had been the most effective drug I had taken. Neither he nor my friend had any real clue that I was well beyond depressed at that point, but it was too unthinkable, unspeakable for me to tell them what I had been thinking. I was afraid that I would be committed, have my children taken away from me… I was afraid I was really crazy.
I was getting cold fast, shaking, my body not being clear on how to adjust to the change in air temperature, so I went back inside, insisting that my husband turn off the TV and put the kids to bed. I thought I couldn’t possibly get much worse. I was beginning to feel like I was drowning. I didn’t know it was going to be a long way down yet before I reached bottom.
As they often did, and normally would have been okay doing, the kids resisted being sent to bed, and my husband turned the TV down rather than off. The urge to scream kept rising in my throat, but I suppressed it, still knowing that my children did not deserve to be yelled at due to my weakness. They finally drifted off, but my husband continued to watch Daredevil, a movie which might have otherwise been interesting to me. But due to my altered state, the dark sounds of fighting and the eerie music seemed to be emanating pure evil. I could sense it creeping in under the bedroom door. I felt certain that my husband was inviting Satan into our midst by watching such a demonic show.
I pleaded with him to turn it off, and he just looked at me like I was nuts, which I pretty much was by then. My memory of what exactly transpired after that is a little disjointed because I was disjointed. I remember thinking I was really, really cold, and I couldn’t get warm. I remember thinking a fire would warm me up. I remember having a moment of lucidity in which I realized we weren’t really equipped for a fire, that the only place I could start a fire without danger was in the barbecue. I remember not being sure how to start a fire, and thinking that the cardboard from the Kleenex box I had just emptied would make good kindling as I shredded it. I remember Jason stopping me as I searched frantically for the matches. I remember him having to drag me bodily from the door, while I clawed at his arms and wailed at him.
The next thing I remember was feeling completely lost, to God and humanity alike. I was in a place where nobody could reach me. Jason was trying. For all I know, God was really trying. I kept trying, to think happy thoughts, to try to get a handle on myself. I closed my eyes and tried to find a safe place within myself, but there was none. Every image, every memory that had ever been special to me, even sacred, any thing which I had ever associated with peace and/or escape was horribly disfigured, distorted, corrupted. The harder I tried to conjure some picture or feeling to soothe myself, the more grotesquely they became altered. Songs became dissonant and evil sounding, peoples faces became death masks, acts of kindness turned to acts of violence, and worse. My head was filled with unspeakable atrocities and abominations. Within me, humanity was on the brink of total, unforgivable annihilation.
Jason prayed with me, for me, over me, tried to bless me. He was probably wondering at that point where God was too. I finally drifted off into restless, whimpering sleep. I imagine my sweet husband really hoped and believed at that point that the worst was over. My dreams were filled with unspeakable nightmares. I woke the next morning in a cold sweat, unable to figure out where I was at first. Jason was exhausted too, so I let him sleep, and tried to manage the kids as best I could. Their noise drove me outdoors again for a time, where again I was struck by the feeling that I was poisoned. I was about to embark upon my darkest hour.
What transpired next probably only took about a second, but the details were complicated. My mind went through a series of thought processes which seemed logical at that time. My reasoning was this: if I was feeling poisoned, then surely someone must be poisoning me, and who would have the motive or opportunity to poison me but my husband. If he was trying to poison me, then he must really want me to die, and what a horrible person he must be to want to kill his wife. If I were to die, he would be left alone with the children, and did I really want a man who would kill his own wife to be taking care of my children? No, but what could I do to prevent them from falling into his hands after I was dead. I had no friends or family who were in a position to assume their care, even if it weren’t a father’s prerogative to get custody upon a wife’s death. They would be in his clutches, and there would be no one to know what danger they were in. The only way I could save them from him was to take them with me to the grave.
As soon as my thinking got that far, a power greater than me took over, fortunately. In retrospect, I must assume God was answering prayers at that point, prayers that nobody knew needed to be answered. In a state beyond reason, I had the strongest desire to take the kids to my friend’s next door. I gathered my little chicks together and walked them over. My friend could tell right away that something was very wrong with me. As soon as she asked, I dissolved into sobs. She unflinchingly assumed care of my kids, but had the presence of mind to go a step further. She asked me for my doctor’s name.
After a murmured conversation with Dr. O, she told me to go home and resume taking my Zoloft, doctor’s orders, and she would watch the kids. He hoped that it would help lift me out of the depression I seemed to be undergoing, since it had been the most effective drug I had taken. Neither he nor my friend had any real clue that I was well beyond depressed at that point, but it was too unthinkable, unspeakable for me to tell them what I had been thinking. I was afraid that I would be committed, have my children taken away from me… I was afraid I was really crazy.
THE INITIAL EFFEXOR EVENT, PART 1
(this true story is taken from what I wrote a few months after the events I depict)
Dr. O tried me on this relatively new antidepressant because it, like Wellbutrin, was touted for its low incidence of sexual side effects. This kept being the pivotal issue. I kept feeling that, if only I could get a handle on my lack of sex drive, I could get a handle on the challenges of my relationship with my husband. It was not important to me that I enjoy sex. It was important to me that I be able to make sex enjoyable for him, and that was important to me because I wanted to provide a happy home for my kids. I was not taking medication at all for myself, really. I just wanted to be able to be okay so others could rely on me, depend on me, count on me. That was what I needed for myself - just to feel dependable.
I made the mistake of trying to make the switch to Effexor the week we went back to my husband's home town for a visit. We had lived in there for four years after my son was born, and the time had been hard for me. I enjoyed seeing my relations there again, had even missed them, but going back was always like going back to prison, somehow. I had felt captive in that place, bound to the property where we lived by lack of transportation, lack of money, lack of friends, lack of optimal health following both births. My own family had been peculiarly distant during that time of my life, even though four of my sisters lived within easy driving distance for the vast majority of my stay. The one exception had been after my daughter was born, when they converged to help as they could. But mostly I’d been left to my own devices. I didn’t blame anybody for this; it’s just the way things were.
So the return was already wrought with a degree of melancholy. The added miasma brought on by the effects of the Effexor made the entire trip seem especially dreary. I managed to keep my head above water well enough during the visit, but school started the following week, and by the time I got back I was fed up with feeling numb and detached. I had a demanding semester ahead of me, I was nearing graduation, and I needed to be at the top of my game. I decided to stop taking the Effexor, and talk to Dr. O about just trying to go without any medication for a while. The week got busy fast, however, and I kept putting off calling him, which would prove to be a big mistake, but I don't think even he knew how bad it would get.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday went fairly well. By Thursday, I was starting to feel a little frazzled, but figured it was just because I’d been running hard and fast for two straight weeks. My mind was so full of school, the kids, household business, and so forth, that I had completely put calling Dr. O on the back burner. I thought maybe I just needed a little pick-me-up, so I went shopping with my neighbor to buy a new outfit for my teaching fellowship. When I threw up in the waste basket in the dressing room, I thought maybe I was starting to come down with a flu bug.
I spent Friday in bed, and every hour I felt a little worse. I kept telling myself, well, the bug just needs to run its course, and once it gets through your system, you’ll be fine. I kept waiting for that turning point in illness, when you feel like you’ve reached the worst point, and you start climbing back out again. It never came.
Dr. O tried me on this relatively new antidepressant because it, like Wellbutrin, was touted for its low incidence of sexual side effects. This kept being the pivotal issue. I kept feeling that, if only I could get a handle on my lack of sex drive, I could get a handle on the challenges of my relationship with my husband. It was not important to me that I enjoy sex. It was important to me that I be able to make sex enjoyable for him, and that was important to me because I wanted to provide a happy home for my kids. I was not taking medication at all for myself, really. I just wanted to be able to be okay so others could rely on me, depend on me, count on me. That was what I needed for myself - just to feel dependable.
I made the mistake of trying to make the switch to Effexor the week we went back to my husband's home town for a visit. We had lived in there for four years after my son was born, and the time had been hard for me. I enjoyed seeing my relations there again, had even missed them, but going back was always like going back to prison, somehow. I had felt captive in that place, bound to the property where we lived by lack of transportation, lack of money, lack of friends, lack of optimal health following both births. My own family had been peculiarly distant during that time of my life, even though four of my sisters lived within easy driving distance for the vast majority of my stay. The one exception had been after my daughter was born, when they converged to help as they could. But mostly I’d been left to my own devices. I didn’t blame anybody for this; it’s just the way things were.
So the return was already wrought with a degree of melancholy. The added miasma brought on by the effects of the Effexor made the entire trip seem especially dreary. I managed to keep my head above water well enough during the visit, but school started the following week, and by the time I got back I was fed up with feeling numb and detached. I had a demanding semester ahead of me, I was nearing graduation, and I needed to be at the top of my game. I decided to stop taking the Effexor, and talk to Dr. O about just trying to go without any medication for a while. The week got busy fast, however, and I kept putting off calling him, which would prove to be a big mistake, but I don't think even he knew how bad it would get.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday went fairly well. By Thursday, I was starting to feel a little frazzled, but figured it was just because I’d been running hard and fast for two straight weeks. My mind was so full of school, the kids, household business, and so forth, that I had completely put calling Dr. O on the back burner. I thought maybe I just needed a little pick-me-up, so I went shopping with my neighbor to buy a new outfit for my teaching fellowship. When I threw up in the waste basket in the dressing room, I thought maybe I was starting to come down with a flu bug.
I spent Friday in bed, and every hour I felt a little worse. I kept telling myself, well, the bug just needs to run its course, and once it gets through your system, you’ll be fine. I kept waiting for that turning point in illness, when you feel like you’ve reached the worst point, and you start climbing back out again. It never came.
Fun with Medications
I have a raging throat infection of some kind. Dr. says we nipped the strep that was there, but I'm still sick, haven't had a voice in 5 days, and there's green stuff. I'm sure that the "fun with antibiotics" session we went through last May probably created some super-resistant strain in my body that is now determined to take over. There are really only basically two antibiotics now that don't either make my heart go all wonky or make me break out in funny red spots. If the cephprozil doesn't kick this, I'm kinda in a tight spot. Also, that fact that I can't take decongestants or anything with codiene (like cough medicine) is problematic. I've been getting as creative as I dare with the herbals, Threat Coat tea, Echinacea, having a hard time swallowing the vitamin C or even sucking on the Zinc lozenges. I haven't had this much fun since.....
Well, a little about the Effexor calamity......
Once I get my other computer working right, I'll download some of the earlier chronicles. This is, for now, the short version.... or at least the lead up to it.
Following my daughter's birth, in 2000, post-partum depression got a firm grip on me. I was having a hard time getting out of bed to make her bottle and fix my son a sandwich. I did it, but it was just plain hard. I talked to my doctor at the time (Dr. A) and as so many other doctors then were doing, he prescribed for me an SSRI - specifically Zoloft.
It was lovely while it lasted, and I didn't want to ever stop taking it. After a while, the zappy sensations and lack of sex drive began to outweigh the benefits though, and in the meantime I had moved. My new doctor (Dr. O) began to play around with other options, since there was an increasingly complex smorgasbord to choose from. I tried going without anything here and there, but hated the return of the hollow feeling, that tiredness which never seemed to go away. He tried out Celexa, Paxil, Prozac, etc, etc. All of them either made me more sluggish, had no noticeable effect, or made me a little too hyper (I forget the name of the dopamine-related one that made me horny and sleepless, but it was, well interesting - Oh yeah, Wellbutrin). When some of them made me feel weird, I'd just top taking them, because sometimes I couldn't always reach my doctor to ask what to do. Sometimes I'd feel a little blue when I did this, but nothing major happened to portend what lay ahead.
What that turned out to be was Effexor. That was the fall of 2003, and Dr. O was excited about this "new" drug that was supposed to have positive effects on both seratonin and norepinephrine levels. I was excited too. Maybe this would be the breakthrough I needed. I can't tell you how wrong we both were. If you don't know what "Seratonin Syndrome" is yet, look it up. It's very relevant to my story.
Well, a little about the Effexor calamity......
Once I get my other computer working right, I'll download some of the earlier chronicles. This is, for now, the short version.... or at least the lead up to it.
Following my daughter's birth, in 2000, post-partum depression got a firm grip on me. I was having a hard time getting out of bed to make her bottle and fix my son a sandwich. I did it, but it was just plain hard. I talked to my doctor at the time (Dr. A) and as so many other doctors then were doing, he prescribed for me an SSRI - specifically Zoloft.
It was lovely while it lasted, and I didn't want to ever stop taking it. After a while, the zappy sensations and lack of sex drive began to outweigh the benefits though, and in the meantime I had moved. My new doctor (Dr. O) began to play around with other options, since there was an increasingly complex smorgasbord to choose from. I tried going without anything here and there, but hated the return of the hollow feeling, that tiredness which never seemed to go away. He tried out Celexa, Paxil, Prozac, etc, etc. All of them either made me more sluggish, had no noticeable effect, or made me a little too hyper (I forget the name of the dopamine-related one that made me horny and sleepless, but it was, well interesting - Oh yeah, Wellbutrin). When some of them made me feel weird, I'd just top taking them, because sometimes I couldn't always reach my doctor to ask what to do. Sometimes I'd feel a little blue when I did this, but nothing major happened to portend what lay ahead.
What that turned out to be was Effexor. That was the fall of 2003, and Dr. O was excited about this "new" drug that was supposed to have positive effects on both seratonin and norepinephrine levels. I was excited too. Maybe this would be the breakthrough I needed. I can't tell you how wrong we both were. If you don't know what "Seratonin Syndrome" is yet, look it up. It's very relevant to my story.
Here we go again!
(from Friday, July 27, 2007)
It's a typical night for me. Not so typical for most people, I'm sure, but on some level I'm used to this, this... well, for lack of a better word, annoyance. Another panic attack has roused me from bed. Just one of many post-Effexor joys. I didn't have them before. Most often they come at 2 or 3 am, rousing me from a sound sleep, usually for no apparent reason. Tonight it came a little early, around midnight. A sufficient number of wasted emergency room visits have taught me to just ride them out. My husband's sleep-deprived crankiness on succeeding days has taught me to keep them to myself. I've tried various things through the past four years to moderate them, the two most effective being yoga and chamomile tea. Even these two tacks seem to be failing me more often of late.
Dr. O keeps trying to give me various medications to ease the attacks. He has a hard time understanding that my body just doesn't respond "normally" to most medications anymore, another one of those post-Effexor joys. A recent sinus infection, during which my nervous system adversely reacted to three of the already limited selection of antibiotics I can tolerate should have been sufficient proof. I don't blame him. It would be nice, easier, to believe it's just all in my head somehow. I think he needs that belief more than I do in a way. Having your fundamental perceptions of how the universe works completely altered is a hard pill to swallow, I should know. Still, I suppose it is in my head, but not in the way usually implied by that statement.
At any rate, I obediently tried the Propranolol he presribed last time I saw him. A part of me still really wishes that a simple pill could help me, despite the hard evidence to the contrary, despite the damage done. I should have known, after the Atenolol, that it wouldn't be that different. The one thing I don't need, most days, is for my heart rate to be slower, to feel more like a slug. I can't decide which is scarier: feeling like my heart might explode or feeling like it might just peter out and stop. Not a great choice. I'm finding it hard to believe they actually think this stuff can mitagate traumatic memories. Didn't do much for me, any old way.
Well, I will try some yoga again and hope for the best. I have to get to work tomorrow, hang on to the medical benefits, for what they're worth. And my boss has been so nice about my evident exhaustion of late, I'm obliged to try as well as I can to be a little better rested. It is a constant struggle. I just hope the new development of the icy fingers creeping along my scalp on the left side of my head doesn't portend anything. I guess time will tell.
It's a typical night for me. Not so typical for most people, I'm sure, but on some level I'm used to this, this... well, for lack of a better word, annoyance. Another panic attack has roused me from bed. Just one of many post-Effexor joys. I didn't have them before. Most often they come at 2 or 3 am, rousing me from a sound sleep, usually for no apparent reason. Tonight it came a little early, around midnight. A sufficient number of wasted emergency room visits have taught me to just ride them out. My husband's sleep-deprived crankiness on succeeding days has taught me to keep them to myself. I've tried various things through the past four years to moderate them, the two most effective being yoga and chamomile tea. Even these two tacks seem to be failing me more often of late.
Dr. O keeps trying to give me various medications to ease the attacks. He has a hard time understanding that my body just doesn't respond "normally" to most medications anymore, another one of those post-Effexor joys. A recent sinus infection, during which my nervous system adversely reacted to three of the already limited selection of antibiotics I can tolerate should have been sufficient proof. I don't blame him. It would be nice, easier, to believe it's just all in my head somehow. I think he needs that belief more than I do in a way. Having your fundamental perceptions of how the universe works completely altered is a hard pill to swallow, I should know. Still, I suppose it is in my head, but not in the way usually implied by that statement.
At any rate, I obediently tried the Propranolol he presribed last time I saw him. A part of me still really wishes that a simple pill could help me, despite the hard evidence to the contrary, despite the damage done. I should have known, after the Atenolol, that it wouldn't be that different. The one thing I don't need, most days, is for my heart rate to be slower, to feel more like a slug. I can't decide which is scarier: feeling like my heart might explode or feeling like it might just peter out and stop. Not a great choice. I'm finding it hard to believe they actually think this stuff can mitagate traumatic memories. Didn't do much for me, any old way.
Well, I will try some yoga again and hope for the best. I have to get to work tomorrow, hang on to the medical benefits, for what they're worth. And my boss has been so nice about my evident exhaustion of late, I'm obliged to try as well as I can to be a little better rested. It is a constant struggle. I just hope the new development of the icy fingers creeping along my scalp on the left side of my head doesn't portend anything. I guess time will tell.
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